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Sharansky: Paris massacre shows time running out for Europe

We’re not building our immigration strategy on tragic events, Jewish Agency chief says, but on the fact that European Jews are increasingly uncomfortable

By Raphael Ahren

Head of the Jewish Agency, Natan Sharansky (Photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)
By Raphael Ahren
On the day after Islamist terrorists massacred 12 people in the heart of Paris, committing what some called France’s 9/11, Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky resisted the temptation to use the tragedy to push for upped immigration to Israel from an increasingly dangerous France.
“We’re not building our aliyah strategy on tragic events. We’re building it on the fact that there is this place in the world called Europe, where Jews are feeling increasingly uncomfortable,” he said Thursday.

Sharansky predicted more than 10,000 French Jews will move to Israel in the course of 2015 — breaking 2014’s record number of 7,000 new Francophone immigrants — amid a reported uptick in anti-Semitic incidents there and across Europe.

“We have to make sure that Israel is very attractive choice for them. And that’s already happening,” said Sharansky the former Soviet Prisoner of Zion who was finally allowed to come to Israel in 1986.
Read Entire Story in The Times of Israel